Posts Tagged ‘Zimmerman’

“His Republican opponents have jumped all over him because they do want to play politics with this issue. The President spoke from his heart on this, it was trying to emphasize with some parents who had just lost a child. By any measure, this was a tragedy and we need to let the investigation take its course,” Stephanie Cutter, Obama’s Deputy Campaign Manager, said on MSNBC today.

“People have to stop politicizing it,” she added. “It’s no surprise that some of our Republican opponents are trying to make an issue with this. But the President spoke from the heart and we need to let the investigation take its course.”

A march from the National Civil Rights Museum to City Hall in Memphis this morning in support of justice for Trayvon Martin turned into a shouting match as different agendas clashed.

Most were there as a show of support for the Florida teen who was killed by a neighborhood watch captain. But Kennith Van Buren, who had a bull horn, attempted to talk about property taxes and racism associated with the Memphis and Shelby County schools merger and how the suburbs want to break away.

Van Buren, surrounded by four supporters, was shouted down by others.

Today’s rally was the third held in Memphis for Martin. While other crowds have been much larger, only about 15 to 20 supporters either marched or arrived at City Hall around noon.

There was confusion for those who arrived later. “Are we here for prayer or what?” one woman asked before finally leaving.

“We came down not to fight City Hall. We came down here to talk to City Hall. We came down here for our children,” said Wanda Mosby, 61, of Memphis. No elected officials appeared at the rally.

“It’s about right and wrong,” said Constance Houston, 56, of Memphis. “And they were wrong.”

A number of the women wore hoodies as a symbol of what Martin was wearing when he was killed. Others had t-shirts with the words, “I am Trayvon Martin.” Underneath that was a quote from Martin Luther King Jr.: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Beverly Brown said the Women of Faith Helping Hands Ministries organized the rally.

Regarding Van Buren and others, Brown said, “They came for their own agenda. What he was talking about had nothing to do with Trayvon.”

The situation is pretty confusing. Like what former Black Panther and current United States Congressman (And the Dems say that America is not the Land of Opportunity) Bobby Rush did on the House Floor yesterday.

Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., lost his right to speak on the House floor after he violated rules by putting on a hoodie and sunglasses in honor of Trayvon Martin, the Florida teen shot last month.

“May God bless Trayvon Martin’s soul, his family and — [inaudible]” Rush said as he was removed from the House floor this morning for wearing a hoodie.

Rush was wearing a grey hoodie under his suit jacket. He took off his jacket, pulled the hood over his head and put on sunglasses while saying “racial profiling has to stop, Mr. Speaker. Just because someone wears a hoodie does not make them a hoodlum,” he said.

“The member will suspend,” said a visibly frustrated Rep. Gregg Harper, R-Miss., the speaker pro tempore presiding over the morning session. “The member is no longer recognized.”

Rush shouted Bible passages over the sound of the gavel as the speaker interrupted him, but he was eventually pulled from the House floor. “The chair will ask the sergeant-at-arms to enforce the rules on decorum,” Harper said.

Rush’s “donning of the hood” violated clause five of House Rule 17 against wearing hats on the House floor.

I thought elderly men wore sweaters, not hoodies.

Bobby Rush is not the only one who has gotten carried away. Black Movie Producer and Air Jordan Pitchman Spike Lee has gotten in trouble for tweeting before thinking.

An elderly couple has gotten a lawyer and moved out of their home because of the Trayvon Martin case. And Wednesday they got an apology from a high-profile celebrity.

Matt Morgan of Morgan & Morgan announced on Twitter Wednesday that Elaine McClain and David McClain had retained the firm. The McClain’s have been harassed ever since someone posted their address on Twitter, believing it to be the home of George Zimmerman, the shooter in the case. The address was apparently retweeted by Spike Lee, acclaimed director.

Morgan stated on Twitter:

“For the record, #GeorgeZimmerman does not live at the address retweeted by @spikelee. Please respect the privacy of the McClain’s.”

Spike Lee tweeted this out Wednesday to his more than 250,000 followers:

I Deeply Apologize To The McClain Family For Retweeting Their Address. It Was A Mistake .Please Leave The McClain’s In Peace. Justice In Court

In published reports, family members said the couple has a son named William George Zimmerman, but it’s not the same man involved in the case. The tweets were reportedly traced back to a man in California.

Classy, huh? Please note that the cretin did not apologize until the elderly couple got a lawyer.

It has been a month since Trayvon’s death. Why has all of this “righteous indignation” just now sprung to fruition?

Another thing…is it just me…or does all this “indignation” seemed awfully forced? It’s almost like it was planned for a month and held until just the right time. Like it was supposed to be a distraction from the Obamacare Supreme Court Hearings…or something.

It is tragic that Trayvon’s young life ended…but, why did the Democrats and the “outraged” wait a month to protest it?

Former NAACP leader C.L. Bryant is accusing Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton of “exploiting” the Trayvon Martin tragedy to “racially divide this country.”

“His family should be outraged at the fact that they’re using this child as the bait to inflame racial passions,” Rev. C.L. Bryant said in a Monday interview with The Daily Caller.

The conservative black pastor who was once the chapter president of the Garland, Texas NAACP called Jackson and Sharpton “race hustlers” and said they are “acting as though they are buzzards circling the carcass of this young boy.”

You’re exactly right, Pastor. His family should be outraged. Unfortunately, though, they appear to be trying to get in on the action, per thesmokinggun.com:

The mother of Trayvon Martin has filed two applications to secure trademarks containing her late son’s name, records show.

Sybrina Fulton is seeking marks for the phrases “I Am Trayvon” and “Justice for Trayvon,” according to filings made last week with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. In both instances, Fulton, 46, is seeking the trademarks for use on “Digital materials, namely, CDs and DVDs featuring Trayvon Martin,” and other products.

The March 21 USPTO applications, each of which cost $325, were filed by an Orlando, Florida law firm representing Fulton, whose first name is spelled “Sabrina” in the trademark records.

Some “pundits” have postulated that perhaps Mudear is just trying to protect her son’s memory from unscrupulous buzzards. We’ll see. In the meantime, more information has come out about Trayvon, which may be found at miamiherald.com:

In October, a school police investigator said he saw Trayvon on the school surveillance camera in an unauthorized area “hiding and being suspicious.” Then he said he saw Trayvon mark up a door with “W.T.F” — an acronym for “what the f—.” The officer said he found Trayvon the next day and went through his book bag in search of the graffiti marker.

Instead the officer reported he found women’s jewelry and a screwdriver that he described as a “burglary tool,” according to a Miami-Dade Schools Police report obtained by The Miami Herald. Word of the incident came as the family’s lawyer acknowledged that the boy was suspended in February for getting caught with an empty bag with traces of marijuana, which he called “irrelevant” and an attempt to demonize a victim.

Trayvon’s backpack contained 12 pieces of jewelry, in addition to a watch and a large flathead screwdriver, according to the report, which described silver wedding bands and earrings with diamonds.

Trayvon was asked if the jewelry belonged to his family or a girlfriend.

“Martin replied it’s not mine. A friend gave it to me,” he responded, according to the report. Trayvon declined to name the friend.

Trayvon was not disciplined because of the discovery, but was instead suspended for graffiti, according to the report. School police impounded the jewelry and sent photos of the items to detectives at Miami-Dade police for further investigation.

A lawyer for the dead teen’s family acknowledged Trayvon had been suspended for graffiti, but said the family knew nothing about the jewelry and the screwdriver.

“It’s completely irrelevant to what happened Feb. 26,” said attorney Benjamin Crump. “They never heard this, and don’t believe it’s true. If it were true, why wouldn’t they call the parents? Why wasn’t he arrested?”

Trayvon, who was a junior at Dr. Michael M. Krop Senior High School, had never been arrested, police and the family have said.

“We think everybody is trying to demonize him,” Crump said.

No evidence ever surfaced that the jewelry was stolen.

“Martin was suspended, warned and dismissed for the graffiti,” according to the report prepared by schools police.

That suspension was followed four months later by another one in February, in which Trayvon was caught with an empty plastic bag with traces of marijuana in it. A schools police report obtained by The Miami Herald specifies two items: a bag with marijuana residue and a “marijuana pipe.”

The punishment was the third for the teen. On Monday, the family also said Trayvon had earlier been suspended for tardiness and truancy.

What about the horrible incident that took the 17 year old’s life? What actually happened that fateful night? Orlandosentinel.com reports

With a single punch, Trayvon Martin decked the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who eventually shot and killed the unarmed 17-year-old, then Trayvon climbed on top of George Zimmerman and slammed his head into the sidewalk, leaving him bloody and battered, law-enforcement authorities told the Orlando Sentinel.

That is the account Zimmerman gave police, and much of it has been corroborated by witnesses, authorities say. There have been no reports that a witness saw the initial punch Zimmerman told police about.

Zimmerman has not spoken publicly about what happened Feb. 26. But that night, and in later meetings, he described and re-enacted for police what he says took place.

In his version of events, Zimmerman had turned around and was walking back to his SUV when Trayvon approached him from behind, the two exchanged words and then Trayvon punched him in the nose, sending him to the ground, and began beating him.Zimmerman told police he shot the teenager in self-defense.

…Zimmerman’s account

This is what the Sentinel has learned about Zimmerman’s account to investigators:

He said he was on his way to the grocery store when he spotted Trayvon walking through his gated community.

Trayvon was visiting his father’s fiancée, who lived there. He had been suspended from school in Miami after being found with an empty marijuana baggie. Miami schools have a zero-tolerance policy for drug possession.

Police have been reluctant to provide details about their evidence.

But after the Sentinel story appeared online Monday morning, City Manager Norton Bonaparte Jr. issued a news release, saying there would be an internal-affairs investigation into the source of the leak and, if identified, the person or people involved would be disciplined.

He did not challenge the accuracy of the information.

…Zimmerman has gone into hiding. A fringe group, the New Black Panther Party, has offered a $10,000 reward for his “capture.”

One-minute gap

On Feb. 26, when Zimmerman first spotted Trayvon, he called police and reported a suspicious person, describing Trayvon as black, acting strangely and perhaps on drugs.

Zimmerman got out of his SUV to follow Trayvon on foot. When a dispatch employee asked Zimmerman if he was following the 17-year-old, Zimmerman said yes. The dispatcher told Zimmerman he did not need to do that.

There is about a one-minute gap during which police say they’re not sure what happened.

Zimmerman told them he lost sight of Trayvon and was walking back to his SUV when Trayvon approached him from the left rear, and they exchanged words.

Trayvon asked Zimmerman if he had a problem. Zimmerman said no and reached for his cell phone, he told police. Trayvon then said, “Well, you do now” or something similar and punched Zimmerman in the nose, according to the account he gave police.

Zimmerman fell to the ground and Trayvon got on top of him and began slamming his head into the sidewalk, he told police.

Zimmerman began yelling for help.

Several witnesses heard those cries, and there has been a dispute about whether they came from Zimmerman or Trayvon.

Lawyers for Trayvon’s family say it was Trayvon, but police say their evidence indicates it was Zimmerman.

One witness, who has since talked to local television news reporters, told police he saw Zimmerman on the ground with Trayvon on top, pounding him — and was unequivocal that it was Zimmerman who was crying for help.

Zimmerman then shot Trayvon once in the chest at very close range, according to authorities.

When police arrived less than two minutes later, Zimmerman was bleeding from the nose, had a swollen lip and had bloody lacerations to the back of his head.

Paramedics gave him first aid but he said he did not need to go to the hospital. He got medical care the next day.

The Daily Caller got access to the “Tweets” of Trayvon. They reveal a young man who was playing “Gangsta”, spewing vulgarities and talking tough. No one knows what happened that night, except Zimmerman and the witnesses. Trayvon is not here to tell his side of the story.

Even though all the evidence seems to reveal that the young man was not as pure as the driven snow, it is still unfortunate that his young life has ended.

And, it’s also unfortunate that certain race-baiting vultures have descended to take advantage of this tragedy.

Racial division has once again reared its ugly head in America. And this time, the President of the United States has used a horrible situation as an opportunity to shamefully pander to potential voters.

President Barack Obama weighed into the controversial killing of a black teenager in Florida in very personal terms on Friday, comparing the boy to a son he doesn’t have and calling for American “soul searching” over how the incident occurred.

Seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin, dressed in a “hoodie” sweatshirt, was shot dead a month ago in Sanford, Florida by a 28-year-old white Hispanic neighborhood watch volunteer who said he was acting in self-defense.

“If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” Obama said in his first comments about the shooting, acknowledging the racial element in the case.

“Obviously, this is a tragedy,” Obama told reporters. “I can only imagine what these parents are going through. And when I think about this boy, I think about my own kids.”

The case has rippled across the nation and prompted rallies protesting the failure of the police to arrest the shooter, George Zimmerman, and, more broadly, a pattern of racial discrimination black leaders cite in Sanford and elsewhere in the country.

Obama, the first black U.S. president, made his remarks at a White House event to announce his pick to lead the World Bank, waiting briefly after the announcement to take a reporter’s question about the incident.

Martin’s parents thanked the president for his words.

“The president’s personal comments touched us deeply and made us wonder: If his son looked like Trayvon and wore a hoodie, would he be suspicious too?,” they said in a statement.

Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law allows people to use deadly force in self-defense.

Similar laws are in effect in at least 24 states including Florida, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Calls are mounting to repeal them. Earlier this week, a Florida state senator said he was drafting new legislation to drastically change the law in Florida.

A South Carolina state representative said on Friday he had introduced a bill to repeal his state’s law. Bakari Sellers, a black Democrat and gun owner, said he wanted to prevent an incident like the Trayvon Martin shooting happening in his state.

“I’m six-five and a black guy,” he said. “I just know that it could have been me.”

Obama said the “Stand Your Ground” laws should be studied.

“I think all of us have to do some soul-searching to figure out how does something like this happen. And that means that examine the laws and the context for what happened, as well as the specifics of the incident,” he said.

“Every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this, and that everybody pulls together — federal, state and local — to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened.”

And, of course, what would a national racial crisis be without the Rev-rhuuuund Jack-soooon hogging the nearest camera?

Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson said Friday that he’s grateful the rest of the country has sat up and taken notice of the tragic slaying of Trayvon Martin. But he can’t help but wonder: Why has it taken so long for everyone else to recognize the chronic injustices that African Americans face?

“We’re surprised that everyone else is surprised,” Jackson told the Los Angeles Times. African Americans have tried for decades to get the rest of America to understand their plight, he said, particularly their beliefs that justice is still elusive in many parts of America, especially the Deep South.

Then along comes the Trayvon Martin case, and facts that are not in contention: Volunteer neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman pursued and then gunned down the unarmed 17-year-old last month, and never faced arrest because police said there was no evidence to contradict his claim that he fired in self-defense.

“I hope that this will be a transformative moment,” Jackson said.

Jackson was speaking Friday morning from the Chicago offices of his Rainbow PUSH Coalition. He had just returned from duties in Belgium and Switzerland. He was in Geneva on Wednesday as part of a delegation of religious leaders trying to find a way to end the violence in Syria. Jackson was preparing to get back on a plane for a flight south so he can add his voice to the growing protests in and around Sanford, Fla., where Martin’s shooting took place.

Jackson said the Martin case is getting plenty of media attention overseas, attention that is both embarrassing to white America and humiliating to black America.

Moreover, he said, the failure to make an arrest in the case takes away the nation’s “moral authority” to address injustices in other countries when it fails to do the same within its own borders.

Jackson predicted that the protests will continue to multiply in number and that the ranks of protestors will swell until Zimmerman is arrested.

“As long as he is outside of the court system, the protests will intensify and spill over into other dimensions,” Jackson said. “His lack of appearance in the court system is a source of embarrassment and humiliation. He needs to face the court.”

So, here we are. It’s March, 1968 again, all of the sudden…except its different this time.

Embarrassingly different. There was an Al Sharpton-led rally in Sanford, Florida, last Thursday evening. Enterprising entrepreneurs were in attendance.

Nation of Islam representatives were on scene in Sanford, too, peddling merchandise and trying to enlist new recruits. James Muhammad, the assistant regional minister of the Nation of Islam’s seventh region, told TheDC that he and others from his organization were on scene because of “injustice.”

“The reason is our love for our people and our intolerance for having our children shot down outside of the law of justice,” Muhammad said.

Those with Muhammad at the event were selling copies of the Nation of Islam’s official publication — The Final Call — which Louis Farrakhan publishes. Farrakhan, a radical and divisive figure, has predicted “retaliation” will be coming “soon and very soon.”

For a buck, rally-goers could purchase copies of the paper from Muhammad’s associates — with the headline “JUSTICE FOR TRAYVON! Demands for arrest, criticism of police grows in case of Florida teen killed by White community patrol captain.” That statement is incorrect, however, as Zimmerman is not White. He is Hispanic, and according to a statement his father gave the Orlando Sentinel, he has a racially mixed family and black relatives.

Muhammad said there’s an underlying hatred of black people in this country. “It’s deeper than the chief of police, it’s deeper than the mayor,” Muhammad said. “It’s deeper than the government. It’s deeper than the president. The reality of it is there is an underlying atmosphere of racism in this country, where the administration of justice is inconsistent and the enforcement of law is inconsistent based on your ethnicity, based on your race.”

Others sold t-shirts emblazoned with puns about how Martin was not armed when he was shot. When Zimmerman shot him, Martin was only carrying a bottle of ice tea and a pack of Skittles, so slogans on the shirts joked about how dangerous someone armed with candy could be.

Rally-goers could buy Trayvon buttons and pins, too, while other attendees passed out signs to the crowd.

A lot of people were self-righteously proud back in 2008, when they assisted in electing a black man as President of these United States. However, they failed to pay attention to another black man, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, who proclaimed on August 23, 1963:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I am privileged to be a Facebook friend of Dr. King’s niece, Alveda King, a great Christian lady and Pro-life Activist. She was on the Glenn Beck Fox News Television Program one evening, sitting with “Uncle” Ted Nugent. It was great. The Nuge and Alveda were wonderful together. He told her he loved her.

Her uncle would have been proud of her that day.

What do you think he would say about the race-baiting prologue pitifully overshadowing the tragic death of a young man?